The whole idea is“controversial”, but why, exactly? For many reasons, it would seem. First, there is the overworked teachers’ brigade, who resent another subject being shoe-horned into a full timetable. Then there are the people who are against the“nanny state” interfering in our lives, and those who fear political indoctrination. There are those who think it is wrong to assess children on whether they are good citizens or not, and those who have nightmare visions of hordes of informed adolescents asserting their rights.

Damian Green, the shadow education secretary, rather startlingly, recently dismissed citizenship as “mumbo-jumbo”.

What? Doesn’t he send his own children to a school which is interested in producing good citizens? Well, yes, it turns out - when I invite him to finesse his views on the phone. It’s only some aspects of the new curriculum that he’s against: “Forming good relationships, feeling good about themselves.”

Of course he’s very much in favour of children understanding how the political system works, doing work in the community, reaching out from their school to the outside world. He just doesn’t think it should be compulsory.

Most schools already do it, he says, and those who don’t, if forced, will probably do it badly. And anyway, it’s artificial to invent a new timetabled subject called“citizenship.” Again, a plethora of reasons.

I can’t agree. Compulsion does focus the mind (ask any journalist) and most teachers, over and over again, come up with the goods - when they have to. What’s more, the “timetabled subject” argument is an Aunt Sally. The curriculum website is stuffed with ideas on how to teach citizenship through other subjects.

Now that the Tories are presenting themselves as “the teachers’ friend”, it would seem that Mr Green has been listening to too many members of the profession who are against the idea of all that extra work. The “mumbo jumbo” quote, I guess, was designed to show he supports them - unlike the wicked Government intent on burdening them with yet more unnecessary toil.

But we are way behind many European countries when it comes to political literacy. In Denmark, for example, folkescole pupils from the ages of seven to 15 are voted onto their school council every year - and participate in training courses on how to behave in meetings, how to represent people’s views, and so on. The councils have real - if limited - power, and the process is as important as the product. The Danes see this system as part of learning to live well in a democracy.

Of course, we Brits have always fought shy of such high-flown and, frankly, embarrassing, ideas. We don’t even have a written constitution - as if, well, it’s a bit unBritish for a chap to put all his cards on the table like that.

Could it be that we’re in such a turmoil because we British are not real citizens at all, but subjects of Her Majesty? That we can’t agree that citizenship matters, because we don’t even have the concept. Now there’s a topic for discussion. Who’s going to start?